Jan 25-31

Language Arts: Kennedy read scriptures to her dad. We finished reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Kennedy made a "why we should have a duck" slideshow presentation. Kennedy made a welcome sign. She finished reading the Penderwicks series. We read The Twelve Princesses. Kennedy did a sentence scramble worksheet. Kingston practiced reading and spelling with magnet letters. Kingston read and wrote sentences on the whiteboard. He says, "I writing sentences. I putting my finger for spaces. I writing the sentence with pink. And the sentence is I am a boy that. That's all me write. But I want to finish my sentence." Kennedy says, "My favorite part of Voyage of the Dawn Treader was when they crashed into the lilies. The lilies were so pretty."

Math: We did addition and subtraction problems at lunch. We did expanded form addition. We discussed negative numbers when the problem was "what's one minus nine?" We discussed factoring with gears. Kennedy says, "We played with gears and grouped them into fives and nines and tens. Twelve is two sixes." Kingston says, "We split nine into threes. Ten is two groups or five."

Social Studies: We read in Story of the World about scientific farming. Kennedy says, "They didn't want to starve. So they said let's find better ways to farm. And now they have more food." We talked about the differences of life in the past and life today. We get to spend more time playing and learning instead of working and cooking and cleaning. We read about Peter the Great in Russia. Kennedy said, "I wouldn't want to be a boy living back then. When he was 11 he could use real cannons and I don't like cannons." Kennedy took us on a pretend trip to Paris.

Science: We learned about extreme weather on DIY Sci. We discussed breeding to get better, fatter animals. We discussed how to grow crops better. We learned about genetics. I taught them about punnet squares. We did an alien genetics worksheet. We discussed the differences in chickens and ducks and what they need to survive. Kennedy says, "I learned that if a parent has two eyes and the other parent has one eye then the babies will have two eyes." Kingston says, "We did an alien thing that teacher Becky taught us. We flipped coins and if they're heads or tails then heads is for uppercase and tails is for lowercase."

Tech/Trep: Kingston built with magnet tiles. He built a lego car. Kingston built with Keva planks. We talked about the economics of raising ducks and chickens and the politics of getting the city to let us have ducks not chickens. Kingston says, "I want to draw a tower and then build it. Look, I built a tower! I just drew a little rectangle there and that's this rectangle." Kennedy says, "We were talking about raising ducks and chickens. It's cheaper to buy eggs from the store than raising chickens."

Elective: Kennedy taught her siblings (including Kingston) some yoga poses. They did some Cosmic Kids Yoga. Kingston built an airport out of Legos. Kennedy says, "I want to trace the gear. I danced to riverdance." She made a picture from traced shapes. She practiced riverdancing. We did art with stamps.